


a grace that comes by violence

by harulu



Category: Neon Genesis Evangelion
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-11
Updated: 2020-07-11
Packaged: 2021-03-05 03:20:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,402
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25197610
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/harulu/pseuds/harulu
Summary: Set during the Soul Salvage Project.
Relationships: Akagi Ritsuko/Ibuki Maya
Comments: 7
Kudos: 76





	a grace that comes by violence

Everyone clears the bridge except Maya, who waits for Ritsuko, desperate to hear something, anything, about the situation. 

Hunched and typing, Ritsuko alternates between several computers, modifying data acquired over the last several months. Synchro-data, instances of ego defacement, information from 01's development, computational analyses pulled from glimpses of the Dirac Sea. With each iteration, the outcome remains the same: Shinji’s matter—the form as they know it—vanishes, becomes imperceptible.

Maya frowns. 

The tension from the afternoon hovers like dead weight, bloating the space between them. The question of Shinji’s matter, yes, but also the cost of three deteriorated Evas, or the exposed Geofront, or Major Katsuragi’s outburst. 

Today, moreso than any other day, Maya struggles to remember a time before fatigue, before her unconscious impulse to quantify pain—an expert, almost, of its many variations. Today, Maya wonders at Ritsuko's composure, her poise in spite of it all. 

A minute passes before Ritsuko realizes another person is with her. She gives Maya a curious look. 

“Is there something else, Maya?” Ritsuko stands, hooking her glasses onto her shirt and sliding both hands into her coat pockets. 

Maya hesitates.

“Will we sacrifice the pilot to Unit-01?” 

“Is it a sacrifice if the pilot chooses not to return?” 

“I—” but she trails off. 

Ritsuko considers her, toying with the stem of her glasses.

"In the early days,” Ritsuko begins, “Researchers proposed that intelligent actors are endowed with a minimum ability to receive precepts from their environment, and so generate action. In practice, this creates a thing that moves, but not a thing with a soul. What these researchers struggled with was an articulation problem: their machines could not create higher order representation from abstraction, and so failed to meet the conditions of intelligent life. In other words, these would-be intelligent agents could not interface human will—a function of the soul.

But the Commander’s wife changed that, though at great cost. Reversing—” She pauses and briefly considers her words “— _Subordinating_ her will to the will of the other creates counterresistance, an impasse of competing wills-to-power within Eva. Rather than matter without humanity, we have only will, and nothing else.” Ritsuko pauses and meets Maya's eyes. “If the pilot does not want to return, he will not—regardless of your feelings, or Katsuragi’s, or mine.”

Maya looks away. A beat passes, and she hears shuffling, the creak of a swiveling chair, then typing. 

“And the Commander?” Her voice is low. 

Ritsuko does not answer immediately.

“That man wants only what he can’t have.”

* * *

Two weeks in. For the last three days, she and the Engineering Department opt to sleep at HQ. Ritsuko manages to slip away, no matter how late. 

Day eighteen. Maya alters a part of MAGI’s code to auto-cohere Shinji’s quantum matter into a legible image. The alteration forces Maya to connect MAGI’s classical processor to a quantum field programmable gate array, which in turn siphons three minutes and fifteen seconds off experimental runtime. Twice, Maya catches Ritsuko’s gaze. 

Day twenty. Ritsuko brings her a mug of coffee with two cats on it. They drink together, exhausted and silent. 

Three weeks, and this time Maya is the one who leans. She reaches over Ritsuko’s shoulder—a hand gripping the chair’s headrest—and maneuvers between the A3 and A1 pathways. Ritsuko’s legs are crossed and she holds her chin, concentrating. In the reflection of her glasses, MAGI sings an affirmative. “See?” Maya says. 

Again, during the third week: Her hand brushes Maya’s as they exchange portfolios. They brief each other on the two parts of SSP, Maya occupying the small bridge-area of Ritsuko’s desk. Ritsuko talks about her time at university, how she misses drinking while she works. At some point, Maya falls asleep. Ritsuko is already gone when she wakes, but a jacket covers her.

* * *

Shinji emerges after thirty-one days with a wet thud into stunned silence. Maya’s hands shake. MAGI flashes green. 

Behind her, a hand on her shoulder, a mouth close to her ear. _Good work, Maya_. It tickles. 

She turns, but Ritsuko has disappeared, too—as did Major Katsuragi. Maya rubs her eyes into the balls of her thumbs.

* * *

They go to celebrate the next evening, and finish their last round at half-past midnight. She walks Ritsuko home. Ritsuko holds her coat, exposing her shoulders, arms, and neck. Maya looks ahead.

Ritsuko’s apartment is not far and her street is quiet. An old porchlight bathes her stoop in washed-out yellow, the bulb buzzing with a monotonous, subliminal drone. Cobwebs canopy the overhang and moths, dodging them, flail helplessly into the light’s halo. 

She is still a little tipsy, though the walk sobers her up enough. But the dim lighting gives her body a hazy, spectral feel. 

Tonight, Maya talks. She tells Ritsuko about her time in Brazil, and her gardening. (“When time permits, that is.”) Without a proper garden, she tends a small cluster of indoor plants: pink camellias, flowering succulents, and African violets. She thinks she might be rambling and gives an embarrassed laugh, self-consciously fixing her hair.

Ritsuko smiles and leans against the inner wall of her porch, looking off into the street. “I had a friend who gardened, once upon a time.” 

Ritsuko crosses her arms, and Maya chances a glimpse at Ritsuko’s shoulders. 

Some moments pass before Ritsuko murmurs her thanks, opening the door to a dark apartment—a place that, Maya thinks distractedly, looks like it has not been lived in for some weeks. 

“Wait.” Before she can think this through, her hand already covers Ritsuko’s hand, and is pulling the door closed gently. Ritsuko does not resist. She wonders if she had played into her plan all along.

“Senpai, I—” But she is watching Ritsuko’s mouth without having anything to say. Maya still holds her wrist, then cups Ritsuko's elbow, and then Maya feels a tug at the hem of her shirt.

Maya kisses her. It is unhurried, and lazy, and Maya can taste wine on Ritsuko’s tongue. She can feel Ritsuko’s fingers in her hair, then Ritsuko's teeth—on lip, earlobe, neck. 

“Come in with me.” Another murmur, drowned by a chorus of angry cicadas.

“Not tonight.”

“Not on a first date, you mean?” 

But Maya steps away, shrugging with a teasing smile, and Ritsuko does not press further. She kisses Maya once more, stepping into her foyer wordlessly.

* * *

Things continue. During the day, Maya reports to the bridge, still exhausted. But when Ritsuko presses her hand to the small of Maya’s back, or leans so close that Maya can see the ghost of a bite mark from the night before, hidden and powdered beneath the collar of her shirt—she feels a jolt, a lurch in her stomach.

And then Rei dies. 

And then she comes back, after all. 

* * *

“I saw it happen, though,” she says. “Not just visually, but her vitals…” 

They are in bed, their work clothes strewn across Maya’s desk chair, or tangled in her comforter. Maya’s head rests on Ritsuko’s chest, and Ritsuko’s arm curls around her, brushing Maya’s hair idly. With the other, Ritsuko smokes, careful to blow the smoke up and away. 

“MAGI was wrong, then.” She sounds bored. 

Maya frowns and untangles herself from Ritsuko’s arm, looking at her seriously. 

“You know that’s not true.” 

Ritsuko takes a deep drag before stubbing out the cigarette. She does not respond. 

“I wouldn’t press this at work,” Maya says with some incredulity. “But Rei died. And that girl in the hospital, she—”

“—Is the pilot of Unit-00,” Ritsuko finishes, voice clipped. She looks sidelong at Maya. “This doesn’t concern you.” 

Ritsuko slides away with her back to Maya and searches for her shirt on the floor. There is quiet like the edge of a knife, and Maya puzzles over it. 

“Fine,” Maya decides, her voice softened.

Maya moves toward her, kissing the back of her neck until Ritsuko rolls her shoulder away. Maya stares.

"Don't leave yet." Maya tries to sound reasonable, but falls short of desperate.

“I have some work left to do,” Ritsuko says. “I’ll see you in a few hours.” 

* * *

She does see Ritsuko once more, eventually. Through the gunfire, the screams, the shaking of the Geofront—Ritsuko appears, draping herself around and embracing Maya from behind. 

She feels—not unlike Ritsuko, but also not real. She types a message on Maya’s computer.

And then it is dark, and peaceful. Maya rests. 

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> A long overdue story for qmisato, who is one of the most caring and supportive friends anyone could ever have in their lives. Kinda hate U for making me spiral into NGE Purgatory during Pandemic 2020, but also my third eye has been blasted way open. I'm sorry for saying Maya was [redacted] once


End file.
